Investigation the relationship between self-esteem and breastfeeding self-efficacy in primiparous breastfeeding mothers referring to Mashhad medical centers

Background and Objective: Breastfeeding is an effective way to protect and promote mothers and children’s health. Two important factors that affecting breastfeeding success, are selfesteem and breastfeeding selfefficacy in women. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between selfesteem and breastfeeding selfefficacy in primiparous breastfeeding mothers. Materials and Methods: Descriptive crosssectional multistage random sampling study conducted in 2014 on 300 primiparous breastfeeding mothers referring to healthcare centers of Mashhad, Iran. Data collection was performed by demographic form, breastfeeding selfefficacy Scale and Rosenberg selfesteem scale. Data were analyzed using descriptive, inferential statistics and general linear model through SPSS version 16. Results: About demographic characteristics of participants, mother age (p= 0.001) and husband age (p 0.001) and family income (p= 0.024) had a significant relevancy with selfesteem but infant age, husband education, residency and method of delivery weren’t like that. And about relation with breastfeeding selfefficacy only method of delivery (p= 0.040) was significant. As well as, most mothers (79.3%) had high level of breastfeeding selfefficacy with a mean score of 131±13.60 and 78.7% of them had high level of selfesteem with a mean score of 27.85±3.54. Regression analysis confirmed the relationship between selfesteem and breastfeeding selfefficacy. According to the result by each score increasing of selfesteem score, breastfeeding selfefficacy score increased about 0.779.   Conclusion:  As the result indicated, maternal selfesteem is related to breastfeeding selfefficacy. These factors can help health care providers to predict length of breastfeeding, success rate of exclusive nutrition in mothers and can lead to the identification of mothers at the risk of the early breastfeeding cessation.